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Today's Stories October 4, 2007 Uri Avnery The Power of the Israel Lobby October 3, 2007 Vijay Prashad Gang of Four Anita Sinha Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans Winslow T. Wheeler Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight? Sharon Smith The Kucinich Quandary Jeff Leys Our Bonhoeffer Moment Sen. Russ Feingold We Must End This Tragedy Mohamad Bazzi Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad Brenda Norrell A Cry from the Top of the World Robert Weissman No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF Website of the Day Jena by Mellencamp   October 2, 2007 Ibrahim Warde Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth Gary Leupp "I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official David Macaray The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote Conn Hallinan Religion and Foreign Policy John Ross The Great American Chess Match Alan Farago Ripping Off Miami's Poor Sonja Karkar The Right to Exist: States or People? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Meteor and the Mahatma Website of the Day Grandin on Che's Legacy   October 1, 2007 Al Giordano The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors Paul Craig Roberts From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West Moshe Adler The Crimes of Microsoft Ingmar Lee My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast John V. Walsh Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy Norman Solomon Political Science and Truth of Consequences Roger Burbach Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left Ramzy Baroud The Politics of Assassination Stephen Lendman The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy Susie Day Honey, I Shrank the Military! Website of the Day Letters from Fort Lewis Brig   September 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back? Uri Avnery So What About Iran? Andrew Cockburn Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable Jeffrey St. Clair Through the Gates of Lodore Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi Andy Worthington The Curse of the Military Commissions Don Santina Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco Ralph Nader Free Lunches, for Corporations! Fred Gardner The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Seth Sandronsky The US Economy Since 1980 Gideon Levy The Children of 5767 William S. Lind A Ticking Bomb Reza Fiyouzat An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran Richard Rhames Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog David Michael Green Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret Zach Mason Hate and Hope in Herndon Poets' Basement Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss Website of the Weekend Domestic Crusaders     September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z         Subscribe Online

October 4, 2007 Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme Costa Rica and CAFTA By LAURA CARLSEN An internal memo leaked to the press shows the lengths to which the Costa Rican government and pro-business forces will go to secure ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The memo recommends, among other things, inventing labor leaders to serve as pro-CAFTA figureheads, launching a publicity blitz (Costa Rican press reports that the proponents have already spent $500 million dollars on publicity compared to anti-CAFTA expenditures of $30 million), and conducting a smear campaign against the opposition. The memo also recommends threatening local government officials with a cut-off of funds and an end to future political aspirations: "... any mayor who doesn't win his canton will not get a penny from the government in the next 3 years." The memo was written by Vice President Kevin Casas to President Oscar Arias. The resulting public outrage forced Casas to resign in an attempt at damage control. The core of the proposed strategy is a fear campaign that, according to the memo, would stimulate four kinds of fear: fear of loss of jobs, fear of attack on democratic institutions ("make NO the equivalent of violence and anti-democracy"), fear of foreign influence ("insist on the connection of NO with Fidel, Chávez, and Ortega"), and fear of the impact of rejection of CAFTA on the government (financial instability, lack of governance). The memo calls for uniting big business behind the agreement, while presenting a public face conformed of civil society members. In its Oct. 1 edition, the Wall Street Journal followed the advice of point number three and issued a dire warning that a NO victory would be a triumph for Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Fear campaigns have become the latest, and often very effective, forms of manipulating democracy at the urns. The suggestions contained in the CAFTA memo follow the model developed by U.S. political strategists like Dick Morris, who consulted on Felipe Calderón's fear-based smear campaign for the Mexican presidency and pushed for CAFTA's passage in the U.S. Congress in 2005. Public exposure of the fear campaign did not keep a desperate President Arias from resorting to hyperbole. According to a Reuters dispatch, he recently referred to a NO vote on CAFTA as " collective suicide." NO Gains Strength as Vote Approaches Opposition to the agreement received a shot in the arm following the memo leak. Since massive public education efforts began, the margin in favor of ratifying the agreement began to shrink and following the memo polls reveal a much faster reversal of the previous comfortable lead for CAFTA proponents. Experts now say that with mere days before the referendum, the vote appears to be a "technical tie." NO supporters led a huge demonstration to close their campaign on Sept. 30. Press reports estimated over 100,000 people in the streets of San José calling to reject CAFTA. Some dressed as skeletons, others wore George Bush masks. Many emphasized the impact on job loss in small and medium-sized industries, and social welfare programs. The remarkable coalition of public employees, farmers, small business owners, intellectuals, and assorted citizens has already changed Costa Rican politics regardless of the outcome of the referendum vote. The capacity for mobilization and unity, and public awareness of competing economic models and their impact on society have increased significantly. Costa Rica's Example The opposition claims that what's at stake is the future of Costa Rica's public welfare model. Statistics bear out their contentions. In a region wracked by violence and poverty, Costa Rica's model has worked surprisingly well at ensuring peace and raising overall standards of living over the past decades. While other Central American nations spent money and lives on civil wars and fighting off foreign intervention, Costa Rica abolished its army and invested public funds in social programs to guarantee a basic standard of living for the entire population. Later when other countries clamored to create duty-free manufacturing zones, privatize state industries, and liberalize trade, Costa Rica maintained control of strategic public services. The results are impressive. In the period of rapid economic integration between 1990 and 2003, the four other Central American countries saw an increase in malnutrition from 17% to 20% of the population, adding 2.4 million people to hunger counts.1 In Costa Rica, only 6% of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, compared to 19% in El Salvador, 20% in Nicaragua, 29% in Honduras, and a tragic 49% in Guatemala. Costa Rica consistently comes out at the top on all regional social indices. Iilliteracy, hunger, food security, per capita income-show far more positive results under the more state-controlled model of Costa Rican development. Clearly, other factors come to bear on the differences, but all signs indicate that Costa Rica has been doing something right. CAFTA's Lasting Legacy If CAFTA is finally ratified by the Costa Rican Congress, the fight doesn't end there. Nor do the changes required of Costa Rica by the trade agreement. The next step is a rush to push through what has euphemistically been called "implementing legislation." Far more than rules to assure that the clauses of CAFTA can be put into place in practice, implementing legislation even more deeply restructures the economy and assures that the orientation toward an export-oriented, free-market (read corporate-controlled) economy is complete. What are some of the examples of the legislation that the USTR has demanded from its CAFTA partners? In the realm of intellectual property, Guatemala-like a slow pupil-was forced to change its intellectual property legislation not once, but several times, before U.S. trade representatives were finally satisfied that it complied with their strict demands on royalties, protection, and enforcement of almost exclusively U.S.-owned intellectual property. The current legislation demands that rounding up poor people who sell home-made movie and music CDs become a national crime-fighting obsession. In cities where real crime has eroded the fabric of society and made the phrase "public security" sound like a bad joke, the priority is worse than misplaced. In the Dominican Republic, "implementing legislation" meant figuring out a way to make up for the approximately $823 million dollars in government revenues lost after eliminating tariffs to imported U.S. goods. The government's answer was to apply consumer taxes on gas and food. Millions of dollars that used to be paid by some of the wealthiest transnational corporations in the world must now be paid by Dominicans struggling to feed their families. The resultant increase in the cost of living led to a national strike Oct. 2-the second protest this year. Implementing legislation cuts as deeply into national sovereignty as the more well-known clauses of the trade agreement itself. Other examples include limitations on the use of generic drugs and further privatization of services. Some requirements appear to be positive-a delegation of members of the Democratic Party recently made a big show of requiring Panama to comply with labor regulations inserted in its pending FTA. They might have scored points for future passage of the FTA in the U.S. Congress but they apparently failed to make a big impression in Panama-two labor leaders were murdered in broad daylight a week after their visit. Despite window-dressing on human or labor rights issues that Democrats have recently included to pass pending FTAs, most implementing legislation has been adopted to make business even easier and more lucrative for the companies planning to expand in free-trade countries. "If it's not broken, don't fix it" The Central American Free Trade Agreement prescribes radical and irrevocable changes to the Costa Rican economy, society, and political structure. An even cursory look at the effects of the model in other developing countries suggests that the course is risky at best, and likely harmful to the country's most vulnerable families and overall standard of living. Meanwhile, international indicators reveal that the current model has functioned remarkably well and existing trade agreements cover the export needs of the nation. There's a simple folk-saying: "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Adopting an economic model designed to benefit the economically powerful is not a good way to allocate the abundant natural and human resources of Costa Rica. Locking future generations into a set of laws they did not make and cannot change is unfair and unwise. Organizations of public employees, farmers, teachers, students, and others have fixed their attention on Costa Rica's referendum. Already Costa Ricans have flexed the muscles of a strong grassroots democracy by actually voting on what are usually behind-the-scenes negotiations. They have taken on the task of learning what the agreement says and what it means. The ability of citizens to chart their own course will affect nations around the world. Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas Policy Program, at www.americaspolicy.org, in Mexico City. She can be reached at: lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org End Notes 1. Food and Agricultura Organization's Special Program on Food Security in Central America Your Ad Here

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